Google's New Android Phone to Have Homely Name?

According to The Wall Street Journal, Google will release the successor to its G1 phone next week, and they may well be calling it the myTouch 3G. Thankfully the new device—which has also been dubbed Ion or Magic in other countries—isn't a sentient being, so it won't be able to hear all the mockery it'll endure for having such an unfortunate name. Seriously: how far can we go with "touch" names before things start getting perverse?

The new device will be a touch-based device without a physical keyboard like the G1's, slightly thinner and smaller than the iPhone 3G, and running Android OS 1.5 "Cupcake."

It will compete head-to-head with the new iPhone 3G S, and while that's no sinecure, Google has plenty of vim behind their new device: an ever-growing Android Marketplace and some excellent early reviews of the device should bump early sales. While the price is yet unannounced, you can bet it'll be somewhere in the $200 ballpark that subsidized smartphones have settled into.